US-Africa building solidarity one brick at a time

WHEN Coumba Touré first visited the US in March 1996, she was a young woman from Senegal and her first stop was in Selma, Alabama. Selma is a city that rarely makes the news, and does not fit the assumptions most Africans have of a city in America. It has a rich and proud history, however, in the Civil Rights Movement that continues to be celebrated today.

Over the course of three decades, Coumba has built ties in the city and beyond, in neighbouring states and multiple communities, on a journey to form “ties that bind” between continental Africans and African Americans.

Farafina: The Black Link Tour is an extension of all that history and more that brought her back to Selma, for the 58th anniversary of the Voting rights Act. Many in Africa may not know the history of Africans in America that goes back to 1619. The stories told by the standard media and the reality of their live experiences differ vastly.

Black people in the US were not allowed to exercise their constitutional rights to vote until August 6, 1965. It did not come about from the benevolence of the government but from people who resisted oppression and demanded to be seen and heard.

These are the stories Coumba has been making visible since her first visit. The social and cultural work she has done over the years has built relationships and make connections, one person at a time, one community at a time.

In Selma when she first arrived, she found a family. Lawyers Hank Sanders and Faya Rose Touré and their children became her family by extension. And the 21st century youth leadership movement became even the larger family. Over the years, Coumba stayed with her sister, Malika, and started a “conversations across the waters” – a series of mails which tell the personal, social and political changes on both sides of the continents.

Over many years, Coumba built these connections to learn about the history of African Americans, (the one that Hollywood does not show or tell) and brought insight to those who visited her in West Africa. The stories they share on both sides try to build bridges and speak to the 300 plus years of family separations of Africans in America and Africans on the continent. They shared not only the atrocities, injustices and resistance, but also the celebrations and victories that have infused people with hope. They went even further to look at the fundamentals of

African society today all the way to prepharaonic KMT (the Black land).

Farafina: The Black Link Tour is yet another attempt to build bridges between continental Africans and African Americans. As bridges, it goes both ways. There are stories in Africa of farmers, students, democracy activists and human rights advocates that Black people need to know about and forge alliances with. Similarly, there are stories of Black lives in the US that many people in Africa do not know about.

When there is unjustified killing of a Black man by a police officer, as in the case of George Floyd in 2020, the world takes notice. The Black Lives Matter movement that started with the murder of a young Michael Brown in 2014 has also claimed global attention. These are not sporadic events but indicative of systemic racism the US continues to struggle to rectify.

The solidarity by people across the African continent is critically important to hear. These are not only US problems but a global struggle that demands to view Africans in the Diaspora in our full humanity. From those on the continent the minimum mandate expected is to know, to acknowledge you hear our voices.

Indeed, Coumba told Africa Briefing: “It is very important to make a connection between Africans on the continent and Africans in the Diaspora because we share the same type of struggles against white supremacy and exploitation and the dismissal of our lives.”

She acknowledged the “many years of solidarity between communities of Africans in the Diaspora and Africans on the continent”. Coumba, a children’s book writer and storyteller, noted the strong contribution to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa by members of the African Diaspora, and earlier support for the independence of African countries. “We need more today,” she said.

Thus, bridge building attempts by activists from West Africa begin a process of remembering Africans building “the Black Link” between two continents across the Atlantic. It is not a short undertaking but one demanding all of us to take part, especially the youth and women and across all sectors. It is a transnational and intergenerational movement building agenda that we are committed to building, one brick at a time.

Be the link. Be the bridge.